Sunday, 8 December 2013

The election
results of four major Indian states Chattishgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and
Delhi spelt a major blow for the Congress –led UPA government at the Centre.
The ruling Congress party has been bogged by a series of huge corruption
scandals, poor governance and mismanagement of the economy.

The results
couldn’t have been better for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
whose prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 national elections, Narendra
Modi has become a new hero in Indian politics. It’s mainly because
of his government’s ability to deliver good governance and a steady economic
growth in the western Indian state of Gujrat. It’s believed that if the rest of
India could match Gujarat’s economic model and growth, India could easily
outstrip France’s economy.

What is
remarkable about the election results in Delhi is the spectacular performance
of the Aam Admi Party(AAP) which literally means a common man party. The
debutant party campaigned in style promising to clean up Indian politics and
led a very aggressive door-to-door campaign. Their strategic campaign caught up
the imagination of many of India’s young and first time voters- and it
paid off.

The election
results and manner in which people voted reflects a changing dynamics in the
fast changing Indian society. Delhi, for example, is made up of urban voters,
whose living standard and access to public facilities are better compared to
other states that went to polls earlier this week. There is also a vibrant
media and people are well informed. The divisive politics of caste and religion
that characterized Indian political landscape in 1990s doesn’t really hold
ground in Delhi.

For the rest
of India too, the 2014 national elections are going to be very different, again
because a big chunk of first time voters are young and have aspirations for a
better life.

When India
voted in earlier elections, the country was still at the early stages of
economic growth, and many of the first time voters were growing up. These new
voters have seen what it means to be prosperous, rich, and modern – partly due
to the media and globalization. Unlike their parents, who had a different
mindset and really didn’t have access to a lot of new things like the media, the internet, mobile phones and a view of the larger world. The new generation, on the other hand, has role
models within the society. There are rich and well to do families in the
neighborhood that have had the privilege of good education and other basic
things in life. They are increasingly
aware that development and corruption free governance is what eventually
counts. In this aspect, Modi’s development model in Gujrat and his charisma
makes him popular.

Indian
society is like the waves in the sea - the ones that come later are more
powerful and larger. Earlier, being a product of public school, foreign
educated and coming from a dynastic background did matter, not just in politics
but also in the society at large.Thanks
to India’s educated middle class, IT boom and economic growth millions joined
what was earlier an exclusive growth.

Now millions
more have joined in on the first rung in that ladder, from living in a state of
absolute ignorance to be able to see the light at the end of tunnel.Millions more are waiting in the wings. They are aware of their rights, want to grow and have a say.

It’s with
this belief they have voted in Delhi and else where, and this might also echo
in the national elections: they want India to be a land of dreams.

Saturday, 16 November 2013

Finally, the
moment arrived and ended with one of the finest speeches that sent India
rolling into tears. Sachin Tendulkar in his final words thanked everyone as a
cricketer, father, son, husband, brother, student and a disciple.

His sense of gratitude was pervasive and
touched the chord of everyone who heard him. So far he entertained people with
his bat, but today when he spoke, he stood higher than any of his records, and
his words were far sweeter than any of his centuries.

No living
human being has been celebrated in modern India the way he has been.For the world a great sportsperson was retiring
but for Indians the country’s greatest inspirational figure was calling his
day.

Like a God’s
idol or a picture that occupied a space in every Indian household, Sachin
remained in the heart of every Indian during the last 24 years. In Dharavi, one
of Mumbai’s largest slums where humans put up with extreme odds in their
grueling battle for survival, Sachin’s name brings about a smile in the face of
children and adults alike. Prakash Jodgankan, an elderly Dharavi resident tells
me: “ Sachin gave me joy and hope. He has made a name for himself in the world and
represented the country with so much dignity. If he is not God who else is? ”

Aziz Menon,
a Mumbai based journalist tells how Sachin rallied the entire nation behind him
whenever he would walk into the pitch to bat. Cricket united India more than
anything else, he says, and Sachin was the unifying force of around 1.2 billion Indians.

When
Tendulkar arrived at the world stage, India as a nation was going through a
turbulent phase. The economy was in tatters, communal violence had plagued the
nation, ethnic and regional tensions were on a rise.The country was loosing direction in every
sense.Tendulkar through his magical
batting on other hand was simply on a rampage and pitchforked himself as an
international star– it mesmerized Indians and gave us a sense of hope. Here was
someone from a country that was making its way up with a massive burden of
history, suffering and struggling to provide a better life for its teeming
millions.

Sachin’s
career also coincided with India’s story of economic liberalization. He heralded that era of brand endorsements and
he practically endorsed everything.Prahlad
Kakkar, a man behind most of Tendulkar’s ads since 1992 tells that Tendulkar
stood for courage, hope and confidence, and he brought out those values in the
brands he represented. He said: “ Tendulkar didn’t represent a brand but brands
represented him. He showed Indians that you don’t have to be corrupt to be
successful and he was very sincere in everything he did.”

Tendulkar’s
ads almost act as a timeline of India’s recent history.People can simply relate to a point in their
life in the last two decades by simply looking at those ads.

The tales of
Tendulkar’s hero-worship are uncountable. By his own account he says he has met
many people who fasted for him whenever he went to bat. His sister fasted every
time he went to bat.

What
Tendulkar leaves behind: it is just not records that he made in the cricketing
arena but more importantly for Indians he leavesbehind a legacy that is rooted in a character built on a strong foundation of great Indian values.

His farewell
speech was a reminder that not everything of our values and traditions are
nonsense, and great things can be achieved ifyou are true to yourself, your family the people around you. He taught Indians to believe in

themselves.

Sachin
Tendulkar is a cricket legend but his career is also an ode to India at large.

Wednesday, 11 September 2013

Whatever may be the verdict on the Delhi
gang-rape case, India needs an all out war to end the social malaises that subjugates and
oppresses its women.

Death penalty is justified

By any
definition, the brutal manner in which the victim of 16 Delhi gang- rape was
tortured and killed by the rapists is a rarest of rare crime. Whatever the
court decides on the quantum of punishment either death penalty- which most
people demand and is likely- or life imprisonment, it will send a strong signal
in the society.

Let’s give
the credit where it's due: the trail was carried out quite swiftly, laws have
been amended to widen the definition of rape and there is growing public
awareness and consensus that violence against women should be dealt with
toughness and without mercy. This itself will act as deterrence to some
extent.

The huge
outburst of protests following the Delhi rape was lead largely by India’s young
and the middle class. The anger of this empowered section matters in India because
of their growing influence and role in the society. It’s precisely because of
the anger of the civic society, the activism of NGOS and the role of media that
the government buckled, and this case was expeditiously carried out without any
delay- dallying tactics.

So it's not
a question of whether death penalty is going to serve as a deterrence. It is the continuous
vigilance of the empowered that will matter. The death penalty is justified in
a society like India, which is still evolving and is at crossroads. India cannot
overnight arrive at the same notions of justice that developed world practices.
India rarely sends people to gallows. Violence
against women is a deeply rooted social malaise that has gone out of control;
so to deal with this, draconian measures are the need of time.

India needs a pink revolution

The verdict
in the Delhi gang- rape will be historical, if in the long term, it is seen as
the moment that heralded the process to improve the lives of majority of Indian
women after centuries of subjugation and oppression, and this is where the real
battle lies.

Jason Burke
in The Guardian quotes veteran
journalist M. J Akbar. He says : “It is a few weeks of outrage against
hundreds of years of tradition."

In a vast part
of India, women are disadvantaged at birth.
The dowry concerns make them a liability for their parents and women are
treated as commodities. This is a reality that plays into a man’s psyche. Dowry
is one of the root causes for much of the evils surrounding a woman’s position in
the society. Since woman is a commodity
that is “bought”, it gives a license to a sex starved man to do what he wants
to do with her.

Despite anti-dowry laws, the greed for dowry
is so huge even amongst the ‘modern’, ‘educated’ boys and their parents that the practice
remains rampant.

India needs
an all out war against this social malaise that has over the years encouraged
child infanticide and feticides to an alarmingly levels in some northern Indian states.

If the
government is serious and there are holistic polices aimed at empowering women,
the evils of dowry can be eliminated in a generation. It
will require a strong leadership and huge social movement to ensure that every single girl is given
education so that they can be financially independent and socially liberated. This will allow them to challenge the notions of
patriarchy and male chauvinism in their societies. It is not going to be easy
but if every family refuses to give out dowry, things will change.

Sexuality
and the new media

We spoke to
school students in an upmarket locality to find out if they are given sex
education at school. All of them said ‘no’, and said their the teachers and
parents don’t think that it is an appropriate subject to be discussed. Everyone
said they rely on the internet to find answers to matters related to sexuality
and relationship.

In India, modernity clashes with traditional
values in an environment that is at best hypocritical. India cinema and media is general is
ultra-modern. Glorification of sex in songs and movies are normal, but society
refuses to discuss sexuality openly.

In rural
India, the consumption of content that promotes debauchery and glorifies a woman
as an object of sex is particularly high. India has what is called ‘B’ grade
movies, where sex and extreme violence dominates the content. This plays into
men fantasy in a culture where even courting a girl is considered a sin. The internet and the mobile phones have made
it easier to consume such content in privacy.

With lack of
even basic education, heavy consumption of such content coupled with alcohol
and drugs at the backdrop of strict social barriers, poverty and even abuse can
have fallouts. The manner in which the Delhi gang rape victim was raped, mauled
and then destroyed speaks volumes about their animalistic tendencies, which could
have been influenced by a combination of above-mentioned factors.

Rape and
violence against women happens across all sections of society and all over the
world. But if girls are raped every twenty minutes, trafficked and sold for
marriages and prostitution, killed at birth, exploited, burnt to death for not
brining dowry, there is a serious problem in our society that requires immediate attention.At the very basic level, there is one more thing that government needs to set right. It is to get the basic transport infrastructure and facilities in place. Creating a world -class transport system with trained staff can greatly reduce many sexual crimes in urban areas.

Monday, 2 September 2013

The way to
Bangalore’s swanky electronic city tells the story of India. You have to go
past massive potholed roads before you are suddenly transformed into a
super-highway that leaps over what is described as India’s Silicon Valley.

The taxi
driver jokingly tells me, “the potholes remind us that we are still in India!”

Whist
everyone say that potholes are a result of India’s endemic corruption, which contributes
to the country’s inequitable growth and development; in the digital sphere, however, the story is different.

Affordable
smart phones and very cheap mobile internet packages are giving millions of
Indians the first taste of the internet by simply bypassing the era of personal
computers.

young people showing their smart phones

In the
streets of Banglaore, we interview people from all walks of life. Rajnath a auto rickshaw (tuk tuk) driver
tells us, "personally for me the internet is of not much use, but my customers
often use GPS maps to give me directions. Sometimes, it helps me to discover routes I wouldn’t know about. ” Mohammad Sultan, a tomoato vendor, tells us that he uses Google to look out for jobs and keep in touch with friends on Facebook.

We visit a low-income group market, where the
shopkeepers are mostly middle aged. They tell us they don’t use the internet on phones, but say that their children own smart phones. Salim, a street garment retailer, shows us his
Indian made smart phone. He proudly shows us his music collection and tells us
that he is very active on whatsapp and Facebook.

India’s
mobile market is growing rapidly. There are more than billion mobile phones
used by over 600 million people in a country where the average age is just 25. The
smart phone market, which occupies 20 % of India’s mobile market share is expected to double by 2014.

Sudhir Hasija

We meet up
with Sudhir Hasija, chairman of Karbonn mobile phones- an Indian start-up manufacturing affordable mobile phones. Karbonn has a market share of 4.5% in India.
It sold 35 million handsets in just over
three and half years.

The smiling
chairman shows us the range of his products. His high-end smartphone is priced
at Rs 11,000 ($165) and boasts all the functions of any other popular
smartphones. His low -end internet enabled feature phone cost Rs 3000 ($45).
The tablets made by the company are just for Rs 6000($90) and have been
given out to rural school children in various government sponsored schemes
aimed at educating the less -privileged rural children.

Mr Hasija
says: “our strength lies in anticipating what people want, we know where India
is growing and we have different phones for different markets.”

He says: “In
India 80% of the population use low -end phones but they want a good camera;
they want the radio. The 3G services don’t even exist in rural India hence they
need to be given a product that look big, but also has the basic functions and can
run on 2G. In urban India the demand is different. The young population is trendy, fashionable
and Facebook savvy. They prefer cheap smart phones.”

India’s home grown smart phone companies
control 30 % of the domestic market and are giving tough competition to the
likes of Nokia and Samsung in the low segment category of mobile phones.

Along side cheap mobile handsets, the mobile
service providers are offering data internet at a very nominal cost.

Bharti
Airtel, an Indian telecom service provider active in 20 countries in Asia and
Africa say the internet data consumption has grown by 117% compared to the
corresponding figure last year. It says 2G & 3G continue to lead the
mobile segment growth through deeper penetration and consumption. The company attributes its success to the
smart marketing campaign: it rolled out Re 1(0.02 cents) video downloads for
its mobile customers across India to give them a taste of mobile internet experience.

Following
the success, the company has more recently launched email and Facebook access
services at Re 1. Bharti Airtel has also
collaborated with Google to provide Free Zone, which gives Airtel mobile
customers access to mobile web search and feature-phone-friendly versions of
Gmail and Google+ in India. The first page of a website linked from search
results is provided at no data cost.

Rajan
Anandan, VP and Managing Director, Google India says, “the mobile Internet user base is growing
really fast in India. Working with Airtel on this exciting trial means that we
can offer Internet services at no cost to anyone with a phone.”

We caught up
with Pieters Marten, head of Vodafone in India. He said the Internet enabled
mobile phones have given a sense of privacy for the first time to many Indians.
People can watch, listen and chat freely. In many Indian households such
freedom doesn’t exist or is restricted.

The
potential of the fast growing developing markets hasn’t gone unnoticed in the developed world. On the
other side of the globe, Facebook has announced plans to drastically cut the
cost of delivering basic Internet services on mobile phones, particularly in
developing countries. It is an interesting example of how in the era of globalisation the rich and the developing world are connected in terms of policy and business sense!

A report by The International Herald Tribune says that Facebook is working with
major mobile manufactures to simplify phone applications so they run more
efficiently on phones and networks so that they transmit more data while using
less battery power.

It is hoped
that in the years to come, with the efforts of global community, the internet
and new technologies will greatly empower millions of people in the
developing world and help them to leap
on a digital information highway much like the motorway over Bangalore’s
electronic city!